Lenovo unveils Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks for under $800

Lenovo has announced the release of its newest Ultrabooks, the IdeaPad U310 and U410, using Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors.

With Intel’s Ultrabook revolution entering into full swing, Lenovo has revealed its next wave of ultrathins as the volume of devices from manufacturers gathers pace, and the two Ultrabooks look rather impressive on first glance.

In terms of features the U310 meets Intel specifications in terms of thickness, and is apparently as thin as a small paperback book at 0.7 inch (18mm), with a 13.3 inch screen. The U410 meanwhile has a larger 14 inch screen and is 0.83 inches (21mm) thick.

The laptops are by no means the lightest Ultrabooks on the market however, weighing in at a relatively beefy, though by no means heavy, 3.74 lbs (1.7Kg) and 4.18lbs (1.9Kg) for the U310 and U410 respectively.

The devices’ release will be backed up by a campaign aimed at various professionals and student types, labelling the notebooks ‘The Book of Do’, and not the book of of doodoo, in a bid to ram home the idea of a mainstream, Apple-rivalling appeal.

Lenovo may be able to fend off some of the criticisms that have been thrown at the Intel backed platform so far, namely that they are a bit on the pricey side.

Lenovo says it is able to limbo under the $800 barrier with its new devices, and this is likely to be largely to do with the hybrid drive taking the place of a full on SSD.

This means alternatively up to a 1TB drive for the U410, or 500GB for the U310, alongside 32GB of SDD cache memory to ensure a quick start up. With Nvidia Geforce graphics and up to nine hours of battery life for the U410 the new Ultrabooks are more powerful than their predecessors.

Along with the usual range of Intel Core processors, the price tag does seem pretty reasonable at first glance, with a $749 price tag placed on the U310 at launch.

While this is still a bit of a jump from the lower end of the consumer market, and north of what AMD’s Trinity-based Ultrathins are set to cost, the price tag shows the efforts that are being made to provide the desirable form factor without a giant wad of cash.